Friday, November 15, 2013

Muslim countries also pressing Malaysia to do more for human rights, says lawyer

Muslim countries also pressing Malaysia to do more for human rights, says lawyer

BY SHERIDAN MAHAVERA

Malaysian InsiderNovember 15, 2013

Apart
from Western nations, Muslim countries also want Malaysia to protect
the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and to do more for
freedom of expression and assembly by signing on to more United Nations
conventions on human rights, a Malaysian lawyer has revealed.

Bar Council human rights committee member Andrew Khoo (pic, top left)
said the message to Malaysia from countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and
Algeria is that these conventions do not threaten the position of Islam
in Malaysia.

The international calls to Malaysia were revealed in a list of
recommendations in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Malaysia’s
human rights record at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva,
Switzerland on October 24, said Khoo who attended the review.

He said the recommendations from Muslims countries and several African
and Asian nations refuted the claims made by local Muslim groups that
the review of Malaysia’s human rights record is a “Western, Christian”
agenda.

“Malaysia has signed up to only three of the nine major human rights
treaties. Compared to Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, which has
signed up to five or six of them.

“So it’s not just Western countries that are making these
recommendations. Every recommendation is important... Malaysia cannot
take for granted that it is doing well in certain areas and that it can
ignore other aspects of human rights,” Khoo told The Malaysian

Insider after a meeting last night with local human rights group PROHAM to discuss the UPR report.
PROHAM is a human rights group made of ex-human rights commissioners
such as Tan Sri Simon Sipaun, Prof Datuk Hamdan Adnan and Datuk Dr
Denison Jayasooria.

Of late, a group of Malaysian Muslim NGOs have attacked the UPR process
as a threat to Malaysian sovereignty and the position of Islam in the
Federal Constitution.

The group has claimed that recommendations made by a coalition of local
human rights groups to the UPR were a campaign backed by Western powers
to undermine Islam in Malaysia.

But Khoo said that in the UPR, Muslim countries also made recommendations to Malaysia to improve its human rights record.

These recommendations included that Malaysia sign treaties to protect
the rights of minorities, migrant workers, the disabled and refugees, to
end torture, and to allow special rapporteurs to come and assess the
country’s human rights situation.

The meeting last night was to review, analyse and chart the way forward
for the promotion of human rights awareness in Malaysia.

The recommendations said Khoo, made up the bulk or 20.7% of a total of 232 stated in the UPR.
About 104 countries participated in the UPR which sees each country commenting on each other’s human rights record.

Khoo said Malaysia’s record on civil rights was also tarnished when
other countries noted how Putrajaya backtracked on plans to end
detention without trial that culminated in the passing of the Prevention
of Crime Act 2013.

Critics have derided the PCA as being a revised version of the Internal
Security Act 1948 which the Najib administration had repealed last
year.

“We had talked to several countries and they said they had to rework
their statements commending Malaysia’s repeal of ISA. This was because
we passed the PCA…” added Khoo. – November 15, 2013.